ISL to host crucial conference for Luxembourg teachers

Teaching "rock star" Dylan William is to give a conference for teachers at the ISL school on March 1 and 2. Read on to find out more.

16.01.2014

Basic education reform has been a contentious issue in Luxembourg for the past several years. A hot topic at the centre of the debate has been school assessment practices.

So this is perfect timing for one of the world’s leading authorities on school assessment to be travelling to the area for a two day workshop hosted by the International School of Luxembourg (ISL) and featuring Dylan William.

Dylan William is the co-author of the book Inside the Black Box, which is considered to be the seminal work on classroom assessment. His teaching techniques have been featured on prime time television in the UK in the form of two one-hour BBC documentaries, entitled The Classroom Experiment.

For fans of formative assessment, he is nothing short of a rock star, and his most popular tunes preach for simple changes in classroom methods that can generate both dramatic results in students and improvements in educational standards.

Governments throughout the world have been engaged in costly research and detailed policy-making in efforts to raise their national standards of learning and set benchmarks for school performance. Amidst all the talk, decision making and the pressure imposed on classrooms from outside forces, Mr. Williams claims something is missing:

Learning is driven by what teachers and pupils do in the classrooms. Here, teachers have to manage complicated and demanding situations, channelling the personal, emotional and social pressures amongst a group of 30 or so youngsters in order to help them learn now, and to become better learners in the future.

Standards can only be raised if teachers can tackle this task more effectively – what is missing from the policies is any direct help with this task.

Help with this task is exactly the aim of the Assessment for Learning Workshop. Teachers will learn how to develop minute-to-minute and day-by-day assessment skills that can powerfully improve their students’ learning prospects.

They will learn which techniques have worked for increasing educational achievement and which have not. They will discuss what formative assessment really is, and what it is not, and they will be given hands on techniques and strategies that they can use in their classrooms and share with their colleagues to support measurable improvements in their learning communities.

The Assessment for Learning Conference at ISL is sponsored by Chapters International and it is open to all teachers and administrators throughout Luxembourg and beyond. The conference, which will take place on March 1 and 2, 2014 is currently open to public registration at www.chaptersinternational.com.

ISL will receive no income from this conference.

All registration fees go to Chapters International to cover conference costs and support their ongoing efforts to provide practical professional development experiences for teachers worldwide